Coski Gives Keynote Talk at ‘Forging Linguistic Identities’ Conference

Dr. Christopher Coski delivers the keynote address “I Speak, Therefore We Are” at the fifth biannual Forging Linguistic Identities Conference.

Dr. Christopher Coski, Professor of French and Chair of Modern Languages, delivered the keynote address at the fifth biannual Forging Linguistic Identities Conference at Towson University in Maryland on March 15.

Coski’s talk, “I Speak, Therefore We Are,” examined the implicit recasting of Cartesian identity in Condillac’s 1746 Essai sur l’origine des connaissances humaines (Essay on the Origin of Human Understanding).

After presenting a brief overview of identity inherent to Descartes’ statement “I think, therefore I am,” Coski examined the ways in which Condillac overturned Cartesian metaphysics by reframing human thought, language and, by extension, identity. Coski showed how Condillac’s prefiguring of linguistic determinism flips around Descartes’ solitary, supernatural and disembodied identity and transforms it into a natural, material sense of self and community embedded in human language.